Actually, most publishers I've dealt with don't want you adding letters to you page. They want you to tell the story through your art. If an artist tries to letter a page they can kill the whole page with poor lettering. That's why companies hire professional letterers.

The main thing, and maybe this is what you mean, is making sure the panels leave room for the lettering to be applied.

Finally, you should work from a test script from the publisher, so they know what the story is and can verify that the artwork aligns with expectations.

He can't. Publishers aren't responding to him. I didn't say anything about bad lettering, his lettering should at the least be servicable. If he can't do that yet then outsource it for the sake of the portfolio. Using art alone to tell the story hasn't worked for him. So he must take the bull by the horns and tell people why they should buy what he's selling.

If he wants to keep some no dialogue pages go ahead, but I would have a short narrative there, one that's readable and understandable as a jumping on point, so nothing too complicated. Then I would have a paragraph underneath the pages explaining his vision. What he was going for.

I know he's got some dialogue in his Spiderman pages, but it's too small and I can't make it out without forcing my eyes to.

I'm not a publisher, but if I was a writer looking for an artist, here's what I'd want to know:

Can his art take my writing to the next level? Can he portray what I'm trying to get across?

I don't really get the idea of wanting so bad to work for DC and Marvel. I think it's somewhat of an old school and perhaps even outdated view. I don't often say anything when I see people who badly want to do that (which is often enough), because who am I to tell others what their dreams should be, but it's something I don't really get, UNLESS the person, is, like, a massive... Alpha Flight fan (or something) and they just HAVE to work on Alpha Flight. In which case, I would recommend taking all the energy they put into loving Alpha Flight and channel it toward their own projects. Once they get the ball rolling, and if they try hard and care, they may very well wind up loving their project way more than they ever loved Alpha Flight.

The thing that makes me feel this way is that industry (or part of the industry that is more or less run by DC, Marvel, and Diamond) is not doing all that great and hasn't been for a long time. Therefore, from my point of view, why would you want to get into this dying decaying business that is really hard to get into, in which there is no clear path on how to do it? Especially today when you have so many other alternatives as a comic creator? I know of people who make WAY more money on Kickstarters, Indiegogo's, and Patreon, than they could ever dream of creating comics for Marvel and DC.

Are those alternatives easy? No. Are they guaranteed success? No. Do they take time and hard work? Yes. Do they have potentially bigger payoff. You bet! Is there a gatekeeper telling you that you can't publish your story, or that they're not going to take you, or even respond to you? No.

I could better understand trying super duper hard to break into the "Big 2" if this was like 1991 when the business was booming and creating rock star creators like Rob Liefeld, Silvestri, Jim Lee, and the like. But that's not really the case these days, and to me, it just doesn't seem like an endeavor that is worth it when there are other paths to take, which can potentially reap way better rewards. True, those other paths aren't easy, but I'd wager they're no harder than getting into DC and Marvel, and staying there as a regular artist, and not just being tossed fill-in issues and the like, and then fading into obscurity.

But that's, of course, just my particular point of view.

Also, I don't think it could hurt to have more lettered pages, either.

I don't really get the idea of wanting so bad to work for DC and Marvel. I think it's somewhat of an old school and perhaps even outdated view. I don't often say anything when I see people who badly want to do that (which is often enough), because who am I to tell others what their dreams should be, but it's something I don't really get, UNLESS the person, is, like, a massive... Alpha Flight fan (or something) and they just HAVE to work on Alpha Flight. In which case, I would recommend taking all the energy they put into loving Alpha Flight and channel it toward their own projects. Once they get the ball rolling, and if they try hard and care, they may very well wind up loving their project way more than they ever loved Alpha Flight.

The thing that makes me feel this way is that industry (or part of the industry that is more or less run by DC, Marvel, and Diamond) is not doing all that great and hasn't been for a long time. Therefore, from my point of view, why would you want to get into this dying decaying business that is really hard to get into, in which there is no clear path on how to do it? Especially today when you have so many other alternatives as a comic creator? I know of people who make WAY more money on Kickstarters, Indiegogo's, and Patreon, than they could ever dream of creating comics for Marvel and DC.

Are those alternatives easy? No. Are they guaranteed success? No. Do they take time and hard work? Yes. Do they have potentially bigger payoff. You bet! Is there a gatekeeper telling you that you can't publish your story, or that they're not going to take you, or even respond to you? No.

I could better understand trying super duper hard to break into the "Big 2" if this was like 1991 when the business was booming and creating rock star creators like Rob Liefeld, Silvestri, Jim Lee, and the like. But that's not really the case these days, and to me, it just doesn't seem like an endeavor that is worth it when there are other paths to take, which can potentially reap way better rewards. True, those other paths aren't easy, but I'd wager they're no harder than getting into DC and Marvel, and staying there as a regular artist, and not just being tossed fill-in issues and the like, and then fading into obscurity.

But that's, of course, just my particular point of view.

Also, I don't think it could hurt to have more lettered pages, either.

I agree with you regarding creator owned books and everything else. Except, that is what you can do if you have a story to tell but if you are just an artist and really cant think of a meaningfull story you have to work for other publishers and writers.

Also I never said that I perticulary wanted to work only for DC or Marvel. I sent portfolios to all kinds of publishers and none have replied. Thats what concerns me because I know that usually you get at least one reply saying "not good enough keep working on this and this" etc. If that is the case.

I have a feeling that either no one ever read the mails Ive sent or I am just so hopelessly bad they dont even bother to reply.

Also I wanted to ask if anyone knows is it better to send the submissions to the submission emails on publishers websites or directly to editors. And if the answer is editors,how to get in touch with them?